Online Education by the Marx Memorial Library

Our on-line learning is based on reading, questioning and mutual support from other participants and tutors. It seeks to draw on the varied life experience and knowledge of those taking part.

Each course has four sessions or classes, each lasting two weeks. For each session you will be provided with short readings, explanatory notes, film clips, short videos and questions or discussion points to which you are asked to respond. These questions form the basis for debate and interaction. The tutor responds, where appropriate, to take discussion forward and to sum up at the end of each class.

Each participant can contribute as much or as little as they want and arrange their participation at times which suit within each two week period.

Course 1 Labour, Value and Exploitation

This course provides a basic introduction to the Marxist analysis of capitalist economics – comparing and contrasting its approach to that provided by neo-liberal and Keynesian interpretations.

The main text is Marx's pamphlet,Wages, Price and Profit. This was written in 1864 at the same time Marx was finishing his great work, Capital,Volume 1, and boils down the arguments ofCapitalto their simple essence.

At the end of the course you should be able to contest arguments that:

·Wages increases cause inflation

·Collective action by workers can never increase wages in the long-run

And instead argue that

·Labour is the only source of new value

·Capitalist production is organised to maximise the rate of exploitation

This course examines capitalist development over the past century and does so in order to provide an understanding of the economic and political nature of the current crisis. It draws on a number of explanations but principally those in the Marxist tradition.

By the end of the course you should be able to show understanding of the range of explanations put forward for the current crisis and be able to contest arguments that:

·The current crisis has been caused by over-consumption and too much government spending on welfare

·Austerity, cutting the social wage and public sector employment, will resolve the crisis

And instead demonstrate that

·The crisis has been caused by enhanced monopoly ownership of the economy and in particular the control exercised by financial institutions

·That such monopoly control leads to attempts to dominate the economies of other countries and internally to the erosion of democratic rights

The four classes are:

1. The last BIG crisis

2. Imperialism then and now

3. Today’s big crisis

4. Monopoly power against democratic rights

Course 3 Trade unions, power and politics today

This course will focus on the limits and possibilities of trade union power in capitalist societies, the role of collective bargaining, strikes and political organisation, the question of trade union power in contemporary Britain and finally, what the role of Marxists in trade unions is and has been.

By the end of the course you should be able to demonstrate

· Greater knowledge of the origins of the trade union movement

· The relationship between trade union organisation and class organisation

· How trade unions have transformed the balance of power in capitalist societies

· How capitalist societies have sought to control and neutralise trade unions

· The new challenges facing trade unionists today

The four classes are:

1. What are trade unions for and how do Marxists understand their role?

2. How do trade unions exercise political and economic power in capitalist society and do they still have power in contemporary Britain?

3. Lessons from the past: how trade unions have previously transformed politics; how our ruling class has sought to challenge and reverse these political gains

4. How can trade unions rebuild their economic and political power today?